"We left these friendly people about four o'clock in the afternoon, and, in descending the umbrageous river, stopped, about half-way down, at another house, built in one of the most charming situations I had yet seen in this country. A clean, narrow, sandy pathway led from the shady port to the house, through a tract of forest of indescribable luxuriance. The buildings stood on an eminence in the middle of a level, cleared space; the firm, sandy soil, smooth as a floor, forming a broad terrace round them. The owner was a semi-civilized Indian, named Manoel; a dull, taciturn fellow, who, together with his wife and children, seemed by no means pleased at being intruded on in their solitude. The family must have been very industrious; for the plantations were very extensive, and included a little of almost all kinds of cultivated tropical productions,--fruit-trees, vegetables, and even flowers for ornament. The silent old man had surely a fine appreciation of the beauties of Nature; for the site he had chosen commanded a view of surprising magnificence over the summits of the forest; and, to give a finish to the prospect, he had planted a large number of banana-trees in the foreground, thus concealing the charred and dead stumps which would otherwise have marred the effect of the rolling sea of greenery. The sun set over the tree-tops before we left this little Eden; and the remainder of our journey was made slowly and pleasantly, under the checkered shade of the river banks, by the light of the moon." THE FOREST. The following passage describes the scenery of one of the peculiar channels by which the waters of the Amazon communicate with those of the Pará River:-- "The forest wall under which we are now moving consists, besides palms, of a great variety of ordinary forest-trees. From the highest branches of these, down to the water, sweep ribbons of climbing-plants of the most diverse and ornamental foliage possible. Creeping convolvuli and others have made use of the slender lianas and hanging air-roots as ladders to climb by. Now and then appears a mimosa or other tree, having similar fine pinnate foliage; and thick masses of ingá border the water, from whose branches hang long bean-pods, of different shape and size according to the species, some of them a yard in length. Flowers there are very few. I see now and then a gorgeous crimson blossom on long spikes, ornamenting the sombre foliage towards the summits of the forest. I suppose it to belong to a climber of the Combretaceous order. There are also a few yellow and violet trumpet-flowers. The blossoms of the ingás, although not conspicuous, are delicately beautiful. The forest all along offers so dense a front, that one never obtains a glimpse into the interior of the wilderness." THE LIANA.